Green Utopia vs Real Solarpunk

There's a difference between genocidal empires dreaming of utopia and a hopeful future that works for everyone.

It’s been a long time since I wrote on here.

I confess: I broke.

The hopeful me, shattered. And since Solarpunk is defined as a hopeful future, and I had no hope to draw upon, there has been silence in the air.

I apologize for the dead air.

It’s not like tragedy, war and genocide weren’t already happening in parts of the world, but witnessing the ongoing brutal horrors live-streamed day after day in Palestine, a people held hostage in their own land, being eviscerated by the latest and greatest “ai-targeting” tech, funded by Western political leaders: broke me.

The contrast of seeing AI-generated Zionist narratives of utopias so akin to Solarpunk, while witnessing the parallel reality of children trapped beneath rubble, emaciated families, surgeries without anesthetic, countless people screaming for the bombs to stop dropping, and people picking up body parts of their loved ones in grocery bags, broke me.

The Solarpunk-like dreams of “re-settling”, building a hopeful "New and Improved Tech-glorious Gaza” over top organ-strewn, blood-stained rubble, with horrific one-sided mass executions of innocents behind massive segregating walls, while bombs flattened entire neighborhoods - broke me.

While they tried to paint idealistic, future-filled dreams on top of gutting scenes I can never wash from my mind, the diabolically naïve and nauseatingly hopeful “green-brush” paint strokes Zionists used were too adjacent to Solarpunk, so significantly similar to Solarpunk…. it became impossible for me to distinguish for a time between the Zionist fictions and my hopeful dreams for the future. It made me question my motives and my own humanity.

Was Solarpunk contributing to the horror somehow?

I couldn’t help but ask myself, was I unwittingly perpetuating these horrors? You could say their AI generated images were inspired by, mired with, and stirred around into the same cauldron as Solarpunk: The Hopeful Alternative ™.

Who was I to thrust further art, writing or ideas into any online spaces? To share dreams which might have a common thread or several, or somehow even directly fuel into these fictitious, imperialist, Zionist, empire-minded, dominance-based dreams where people were so alienated from their bodies, minds and hearts, that they would dream a Solarpunk dream of all things, overtop their own mass murders?

Images of a “New Gaza”

Seeing these images of a “New Gaza”, now amplified by AI, revolted me. I had been using AI to generate hopeful fictions, my own conjures of a hopeful future. I had been aiming for plausible fiction that united people. That gave us something to lean into and be inspired by. I was dreaming into a hopeful collective future, one with harmony between peoples and regions. But with the contrast in front of me, it became necessary to ask: what made my dreams any different from the images below?

An assortment of images from Netanyahu's Office, and from Trump's social media, depicting Solarpunk-like, futurist, Ai generated images of Gaza

“A renewed and idyllically urban city, with magnificent skyscrapers surrounded by greenery. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shared with partners the drafts of how war-torn Gaza could look in ten years, just a few months before the United States (U.S.) President Donald Trump revealed his controversial plans for a “Middle Eastern Riviera” that would see two million Palestinians displaced.”

Reference: sarajevotimes.com

How do we know if we are perpetuating?

Growing up in a Mormon household, I was taught that there was a “New Zion” going to be built in America, and that I was destined to be part of a “Chosen Generation” who was going to build that new Zion. I left that religion behind long ago, but the threads of this narrative came up anew, like old fabric being brought out of the attic that had collected dust and spiderwebs for decades. The Zionism narrative spun by Israel made me wonder if I would even be aware of all the ways I might unconsciously have internalized these world views and be perpetuating similar narratives through my Solarpunk lens.

So I asked myself, who was I to dream hopeful futures into the collective? Would my views be tainted by the religion I was brought up in? Surely I inherited some default thinking from my external world in a Christendom End Times™ upbringing. I’d wager my perceptions of hope and what the future could look like are influenced by and probably subconsciously inherited from those world-views I was fed, of an idyllic “New American Zion”.

And so I stopped. In my tracks. Or rather, something stopped me in my tracks. I’m not sure it was a choice so much as a reckoning with integrity. I could not bring myself to say anything, though I tried. Again and again I tried.

I was compelled to pause, and look at the hopes I have, especially the ones I publicize.

Am I perpetuating?
Or am I listening?

Am I transmuting?
Or am I regurgitating?

Without knowing the answer, I have found myself unable to write about hopes or dreams of the future…. A shared place on this Earth… A dream worth leaning into…

My promise to you going forward

A part of me is a child still, and that part can never grow up - and somehow this part is not completely smothered, despite societal attempts. This part still lives, still clings, madly, desperately to the very very simple, grounding reality which has been the only saving grace for me during this genocide:

I am still breathing.
And because I breathe, I still have capacity to affect change, despite the overwhelming odds.

And so. With this one thing, this one thought that I still breathe and therefore have capacity, I have begun to arm myself each day against the despair that threatens to drag me under, while having a front row seat to this modern day Hell.

I recognize this gift of life, that so many have lost, and though it may seem obvious and simple to you, to me, it is all I have left. The most certain thing to anchor myself to.

And because of this, the kid in me chooses to dream, to spite the horror I see. And the adult in me lets go of the confusion and destruction between contacting representatives, so the kid in me can plan and dream and hope. And together, the two parts of me, the adult and the child, are planning to share again. Something hopeful. Something malleable. But something that will change as it goes along, as all beings and ecosystems do for as long as they are alive.

And hopefully, through the collective sharing of dreams, drop by drop I can add to the bucket of hope, such that perhaps….. perhaps within our lifetimes, we can construct a new world where sentient beings are never permitted to be massacred like this, especially in pursuit of some Zion.

Two Solarpunk Visions

Finally, I have arrived at the distinction between their genocidally toxic “Green Utopia” and “Real Solarpunk”. And I think you’ll also notice going forward into the years ahead that there are two versions, one that aims to paint glossy aesthetics over oppression and cover over ruins of sacred things with corporate scale “fixes”, and one that embodies nature-based harmony, which values what came before, which integrates, supports and uplifts the oppressed.

We are not going to change the minds of powerful dictators. But we can build something strong together, something that outlasts their dying empires.

We need to wade through the unknown messy middle together - where we navigate toward a better future that prioritizes all of us, not just the privileged few. Just as water carves stone slowly over centuries, it will take time. But we are many. And we are growing. Awake and aware and breathing, we can tether together and become unstoppable tsunamis of change. The more we share, the more these ideas take hold and spread and morph.

I’m so grateful to see that I am not alone in this. There are so many of you out there. The more I look for you, the more I find of you.

I refuse to let my art contribute to or be shamefully built overtop suffering. I will embrace the grief. And let it point me in the direction I should take.

So long as I am breathing, this hope is what I can offer you who are still here with me.

These are a few Ai generated dreamings of mine. Some Solarpunk snapshots of possible hopeful futures where technology and nature are brought into harmony with one another.